Fascia Release Techniques

We all know how important water is to our bodies. It keeps us moving, it keeps us flexible, it saturates our joints, our tissues and is critical to life. It is the very reason we exist! If you are reading this blog then I am certain you are drinking your 2 litres a day, but is that water actually being absorbed by your muscles or is it just running straight through?

Having spent 3 days with Tom Myers discussing all things Fascia, it really drove home to me that good Fascia (connective tissue) health is not just important to movement, injury prevention and pain levels but it is actually a major factor in determining the hydration levels within your body too.

Fascia. The word of the moment in the world of body work. Whether it be injury prevention, fitness training, injury treatment, postural correction or chronic pain it is almost a certainty these days that someone has discussed Fascia or Connective tissue with you. A substance once cut out and thrown away in cadaver, has now had the tables turned with dissection now becoming more focused on this one time garbage and how it connects together to form functional lines within our body.

Although science is catching up with the importance of this tissue that amongst a myriad of functions provides us with a vital, high speed communication route within our neural network, its importance in creating postural integrity and a pain free existence has been around for a very long time – think Yoga for example! In more ‘recent’ times and in terms of body work, I look to the work of Ida Rolf for breaking ground in this area at a time when science and her peers may have simply written off her beliefs.

Born in 1896 in New York she started her career as a biochemist achieving her PHD in 1926. Leaving her research in this area behind she moved to Switzerland where she studied mathematics and atomic physics. It was around this time in the 1930’s that her own ailments and those of people close to her drove her to also study a number of alternative therapies to help in alleviating the symptoms that seemed to be resistant to modern medicine at the time. An extremely intelligent and gifted academic she studied many therapies including Homeopathy, Osteopathy, Yoga and the Alexander Technique. Clearly a woman of science, yet what I believe made her great was also an appreciation for what she anecdotally found through treatments she performed and the results she achieved. This led to her core belief that ‘When the body gets working appropriately, the force of gravity can flow through. Then spontaneously, the body heals itself’.

We all know now how postural imbalance wrecks havoc with our bodies, we also now know how simple deviations from posture changes the loads that are put through each joint e.g. “For every inch of Forward Head Posture, it can increase the weight of the head on the spine by an additional 10 pounds.” -Kapandji, Physiology of Joints. If our goal becomes aligning a body against gravity returning us to our evolutionary best, do these extraneous pressures, vectors and forces simply disappear? In these elements disappearing do our aches, pains and potentially even our illnesses simply disappear?

It sounds simple in principle but with hundreds of muscles, tendons, ligaments and bones in the body how do we treat each of these to achieve our most resilient bodies? Dr Ida Rolf proposed the fastest and most effective way to achieve this was actually by releasing, un-sticking and reorganising our connective tissue to create space. Space that allows those hundreds of bones, muscles and ligaments to fall into place and become resilient against gravity and the external pressures we expose ourselves to on a daily basis. This approach would allow us to move better, for energy to flow seamlessly within our bodies, for fluids to ebb and flow without getting stuck, to allow us to stand comfortably and resiliently within our skins against gravity. Structural Integration was born. A series of sessions that work through the most superficial to the deepest levels of your fascia unwinding this connective tissue leaving your with a Resilient body ready to take on the world.

The science may not have been as advanced as Dr Ida Rolfs thinking and practice were at the time but what is for certain and why forms of Structural Integration and Myofascial Release are becoming more widely available is that science IS now catching up. Look to the amazing work by Schleip, Langevin and the Fascia Research Project at Ulm University if you want to get yourself up to speed.

I was first introduced to the wonders of Instrument Assisted Massage and IAM Tools by the fabulous Jenny Burrell late last year and was amazed by the level of soft tissue release achieved in such a short space of time. This weekend I attended the Advanced Course in Instrument Assisted Massage Tools run by IAM Tools and have been absolutely amazed by the extent these tools can help in soft tissue

work having got myself into a bit of a tool rut reserving its use for necks, hip flexors and forearms.

If Instrument Assisted Massage is so effective what is stopping more therapists from integrating it into their treatment tool belt? Here I intend to write a review of Instrument Assisted Massage from a once sceptic who is now fully converted to its benefits in the hope that it maybe helps you to give it a go! Continue reading Instrument Assisted Massage: A Therapists Review

‘Fascia’, if you haven’t heard of it, take note as it is the big thing in ‘Soft Tissue’ these days. What is this stuff dubbed ‘The Cinderella’ tissue by Dr Schleip and how does it impact how we treat clients as massage therapists? In its simplest terms it is a web of collaginous fibres that hold everything in the body together so we act as one strong and co-ordinated unit, a single organ. Fascia connects skin, veins, organs, nerves, muscles and bones together so we can move and function by distributing the stresses and strains across our body. On that basis, if it is restricted or damaged its impact on the body can be vast.If that is the case then why has Fascia been ignored for so long?

One view is that since it differs from person to person in texture & quality it has been difficult to describe. In addition it cannot be split easily into segments that we can name like muscles and bones (Dr. Schleip) which again has made it harder to document and study. The good news is that technology has now improved to a level where Fascia can now be studied in more detail so research is catching up on proving why this tissue is so important and how it impacts the body.